FOOTNOTES
Reading edition
“Vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself.”
It should be its sell. Sell is saddle in Spenser and elsewhere, from the Latin and Italian.
This emendation was shewn to the late Mr. Hazlitt, an acute man at least, who expressed his conviction that it was the right reading, and added somewhat more in approbation of it.
“Solum Æneas vocat: et vocet, oro.”
The Editor could only reply, indeed weakly, that calling and waiting are not exactly the same, unless when tradesmen rap and gentlemen are leaving town.
He shewed us Guy’s pot, but the soup he forgot; Not a meal did his lordship allow, Unless we gnaw’d o’er the blade-bone of the boar, Or the rib of the famous Dun Cow.
When Nevile the great Earl of Warwick lived here, Three oxen for breakfast were slain, And strangers invited to sports and good cheer, And invited again and again.
This earl is in purse or in spirit so low, That he with no oxen will feed ’em; And all of the former great doings we know Is, he gives us a book and we read ’em.
Garrick.
Stale peers are but tough morsels, and ’t were well If we had found the fresh more eatable; Garrick! I do not say ’t were well for him, For we had pluck’d the plover limb from limb.
Quin.
Whoreson, a word of frequent occurrence in the comedies; more rarely found in the tragedies. Although now obsolete, the expression proves that there were (or were believed to be) such persons formerly.
The Editor is indebted to two learned friends for these two remarks, which appear no less just than ingenious.